Yotun

Yotun is a master of the Zahiriye at the Archon in the campaign Mürekkep ve Çelik ("Ink and Steel"), and a friend and colleague of the mage Castor. In the later campaign Zincirsiz ("Unchained") he appears as the great master of the Zahiriye.¹²

The workshop

Yotun's workshop rings with saws, hammers and chemicals; an iron stair leads to his upper working room, where he engraves patterns on metal with acid, wearing spectacles. Students talk of a lesson of his on the danger of bags of holding, which recalled an experiment in the second age in which two such bags were joined and a pull formed around them. Each master of the Zahiriye has a workshop of his own, with shared space for the students.³⁴⁵

With the master Nocklin and an assistant, Yotun sat disguised among the students to watch a lesson Castor gave; at the end the spell broke, and the three revealed themselves as teachers, remarking that Castor would make an academic.¹

The dining hall

Spoiler: What happened in the dining hallRevealSpoils: Mürekkep ve Çelik #10 · Say what you have read

When the witch hunters' captain shot the great master Follos in the Archon's dining hall, Yotun, enraged, readied a lightning bolt at the captain, and Castor stopped the spell, calling out to him. Later Castor came to apologise. Yotun said he had lost his temper and was not offended, that Castor had done well, though he had wanted to burn them all, and spoke of a joint project for a week after Castor won his mastery.⁶⁴

Helping Castor

Before Castor's thesis presentation, Yotun lent him a precious crystal that projected large images of the signs Castor drew with small magic behind him, and asked for it back. The master Exolkar admired it and thought of asking Yotun whether it could be copied for every teacher.⁷⁸

When Castor came to bid farewell before his mastery examination, Yotun was working with two assistants over a large covered project and reminded him that he had promised to help with it, so dying was out of the question. He let Castor take an open-faced plate helmet from a heap of armour kept for scrap metal, and said that deaths in the examination come from pride, from refusing to admit defeat, so there is no shame in withdrawing.⁹¹⁰

Spoiler: Castor's workRevealSpoils: Mürekkep ve Çelik #13; Starter Setting Guide; Mürekkep ve Çelik #14; Mürekkep ve Çelik #15 · Say what you have read

After his mastery, Castor kept his promise of two months' work. Yotun needed his skill at changing elements for a mechanism to turn force into heat. What he showed was an imperial secret, cleared through the spymaster. The emperor had died in battle in a way that should never have happened, and an old, never-used plan, the Warforge, had been revived: a guard regiment of arcane metal soldiers for the emperor that would never tire, fear, waver or abandon a fight, loyal to the emperor alone, that could not be bought or have its mind changed. Yotun lifted the cover from a metal soldier. After the death of Conrad the Conqueror, the Archon is said to have made tireless, ever-watchful construct guardians.^1112131415

Working with Castor for about a week, Yotun was trying to create a thinking, conscious being unlike an ordinary golem, at first lacking a fit source of power. Over lunch he advised Castor on making his ship safe: dwarven runes, which work best on mithral, though dwarves are slow to invent new ones; a clay golem, which needs no breath; elven abjurations on sails and masts; a bird awakened by a druid to guide him where there are no maps; and help from the elves beneath the sea. He warned him not to trust the spymaster too far, and expected that the first five prototypes could be moved within a week, proposing Castor to escort them. Yotun treats him now as a colleague rather than a student.^{1617181920212223}

In White City, over rice pudding at the White Stag, Yotun told Castor that the fifth prototype had been lost in transport; his own theory was that it had sunk to the bottom of the sea, and the Archon wished it to be spoken of as though there had only ever been four.²⁴²⁵

In Zincirsiz

In the time of the young mage Jonathan, Yotun is the great master of the Zahiriye, the same Yotun under whom Castor had worked; his advanced student Michael works beside him and takes commissions. Jonathan once slipped into his room, with its private workshop and library, to copy from a valuable book on golems, and later learned to use tinkering tools there. When Jonathan showed him his companion Blink, Yotun said he did not know exactly what it was but that it was no harmful fiend, and let him keep it on condition that he not use it to bend the school's rules. Jonathan's friend Dunk later wrote that he had bought two items through which the friends could speak at a distance with the great master's help.^262722829